


Beginnings

by jenish (phizzle)



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-04
Updated: 2006-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:13:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phizzle/pseuds/jenish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For natilathehun.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> For natilathehun.

Each song is different. Some start out slowly, with just a note or a vague idea scribbled on a napkin or the back of an envelope or a stretch of skin. Some flood, all in a rush, concept idea words music flow, and it all just _fits_ and they look at each other and know they're onto something good.

Some songs start out rushing, tumbling all at once, words coming so fast Pete can't move his pen quickly enough. The melodies are right there when Patrick reads them, sounds in the pattern, and he doesn't notice the world again until he's got them down. Then the song stalls, as if someone turned the valve on the dam off, and it just sits. Refuses to budge, to move forward, to _finish_. Patrick leaves it in frustration, and Pete looks at the chorus again and finds it all wrong, and they drop the song until three weeks later the answer comes to them both at the same time, and – no matter what they're doing or what they knock over in their haste to get to paper – their eyes meet and their hands scramble over each other, marking pages, and it's _there_ and it's so _right_ and it's _perfect_. It happened once during lunch at some diner just off the highway, Andy and Joe staring bewildered at the two boys hunched over the napkin, whispering to each other half-gulped words and sentences and _yes!_es.

Some songs start slowly – Patrick feels out a snatch of a tune as he washes his hands, staring into the mirror too early in the morning; Pete wakes in the night, scrawls a phrase on his arm, rolls over and sleeps again – and that's all that will come for months. Then more will trickle in – dribs, drabs, a chord here or a line there – and suddenly, it'll rush and tumble and spurt, almost too quickly to be documented, unhalting avalanche, and woe betide either of them not having a pen handy. Pete writes some of these in eyeliner on mirrors in dressing rooms. (This caused William once to look into his mirror, then stare at Pete with an eyebrow raised. "What?" he began, then stopped, shrugged, and moved over to share Tom's.)

Relationships aren't quite like songs. (Except to Patrick, for whom life is one long symphony. He's obsessed with getting the harmonies right. It's a mystery to Pete.) There's the ones that start with the crashing chords but drop, suddenly; there's the ones that build slowly to the bridge and then just fade; there's the ones that feel like there wasn't really a starting point and there won't be an ending point; there's the ones that are one sharp, high note, echoing into silence. There's a hundred kinds, a thousand kinds, six billion kinds. Pete feels he will never know them all, but that doesn't stop him trying. (Ryan once told him the way to find out isn't through asking questions, but when Pete asked him what _is_ the way, then, he hadn't said anything. Pete figured it was just Ryan's way of telling him to stop prodding for information about him and Brendon.)

"The way I see it," Tyson slurred, one night after far too many beers and far too many late nights playing to crowds who give you such adreneline rushes you could get high just by breathing, "everything has to start somewhere. Just sometimes, you can't remember where."

Pete wondered where on earth Tyson was going with this, but just nodded.

"Take me and Nick, for example," he said, slapping his arm around Nick's shoulders. "We've been together, what, thirty years?"

Nick snorted. "Feels like it sometimes," he said, kicking Tyson's ankle with all due affection.

"And yeah, I can remember the day we met like it was yesterday. Except I can't really remember yesterday at the moment – but my point is, I remember meeting this bastard _better_ than I remember yesterday. But that doesn't mean I haven't known him all my life."

Pete refrained from pointing out that _yes, actually, it does, but I know what you mean_. He left for his own bus when they started making out and appeared to forget that he was there. (It would have been hot, and he would have stayed to watch, but the spaces between what he knew and what he wanted were making him shiver and he needed to trace the curve of Patrick's jaw to ground himself again.)

"How does this start?" Pete looked up, saw Patrick holding out sheets of paper. He took them.

"I don't know," Pete admitted, glancing over the notes. "Where do you want it to start?"

Patrick sat next to him. "How, not where," he said, taking them back. Pete picked at the sleeve of his hoodie. "There are a couple of options. Contact," he tapped the paper where the words drove in staight lines, _I hope your skin still feels my fingerprints_, "or," he shifted closer, "kiss," tapping the page where the letters curled, _I want to kiss you, Pete_.

He blinked. That last was in Patrick's handwriting. _In the wake of_ skitted through his head, unconnected to anything current. Present. Patrick's hand on his knee.

"Both works," Pete said, wondering how he still remembered how to talk because he didn't remember remembering. And wasn't this moment the entire point of asking every person under the sun how things like this started? Maybe. Possibly. Definitely.

_Patrick tastes of, he tastes, he._ Pete moved his hand to the back of Patrick's neck, cupping, fingertips, and Patrick's hand was on his shoulder, _whorls and prints and what I write about_, and Pete shifted and Patrick shifted and it was _close_ and he could feel Patrick's body heat, and it was coming off him in _waves_ or maybe Pete was dreaming, maybe he'd fallen asleep on the bus near the engine and the warmth was seeping in but no, this was definitely real and Pete was suddenly sure that with this one, there was no start point to go from, and there was no end point to go to. There was just, this.


End file.
